Embodiments relate to encryption, and in particular, to processing of queries over encrypted data.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Security may pose an obstacle to widespread adoption of data handling in the cloud. Specifically, criminal hackers or foreign government organizations may try to gain access to data that is stored in the cloud.
Encryption of data may provide a solution to this issue. However, such encryption may also interfere with the use of such encrypted data, for example computation utilizing the encrypted data in the cloud.
Accordingly, a current subject of research investigates the processing of the data that remains in encrypted form.
One manner of providing software on the cloud, is Database-as-a-Service (DaaS). In such a product, a service provider offers database storage and query capabilities (e.g., through an SQL interface), and then charges a user for storage and computation.
Such a DaaS scheme is less valuable, if query processing is limited to the client side, and only storage is performed in the cloud. By contrast, a DaaS scheme that allows queries to be performed on data that remains encrypted, would provide greater value by permitting processing of that data on the cloud.
Thus, there is a need for systems and methods allowing processing of queries over encrypted data.